There is a rapidly growing trend toward mobile and remote data access over high-speed communication networks, such as provided by 3G or 4G cellular services. For example, using these services, users now rely on their smartphones for texting, access to email, banking, and social media, and for sending and receiving pictures and video.
Typically, wireless network performance depends in part on the quality of the transmission channel. For example, if the channel conditions are good, the network may perform with higher speed and capacity than when the channel conditions are poor. To obtain the best network performance, wireless networks may rely on user devices (e.g., user equipment “UE”) to report control information back to the network. The control information includes parameters indicating the channel conditions and/or transmission parameters. One way user devices report control information back to the network is through a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH). The network receives the control information over this shared channel and uses the received parameters to adjust data transmissions for optimum performance based on the network conditions indicated by the received parameters.
One use of the control information is to provide acknowledgement information that is transmitted from a UE to the network server through the PUSCH. For example, after a user device receives a transmission from a network server, it generates control bits representing an acknowledgement (ACK) that indicates whether or not the transmission was properly received. These control bits are transmitted back to the network server through the PUSCH so that the server can determine from the received ACK whether the transmission was properly received and initiate a retransmission if necessary.
Thus, the use of control bit information can enhance the operation of the communication network to provide fast and efficient network services. In one case, the control bit information is encoded in transmissions from the UE. When the control bit information is received at the network server it needs to be decoded to be utilized. Unfortunately, conventional detection algorithm may not receive and decode the control bit information properly. For example, in the case of control bit information used to transmit packet acknowledgement, if a packet is successfully received, the UE will respond by sending control bits representing an ACK back to the transmitting server. If a packet is not successfully received, the UE will send control bits representing a NACK back to the transmitting server. A missed detection occurs when the server does not detect an ACK sent by a UE. A false alarm occurs when the server detects an ACK even though the UE did not send one. Unfortunately, conventional control bit detection has proven to be less than optimal in properly detecting the reception of the control bit transmissions, which results in reduce network performance.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a detection mechanism that efficiently detects with high probability the reception of control bit information transmitted from a UE.